A Final Encounter
by riddle101
Summary: The war has begun and Balisk can't hold the weight of it on his shoulders. He will soon find out how peaceful it can be to let it all go and give up everything to be perfect. Contains M/M and character death. You must read A Strange Encounter before this.


**A Final Encounter**

I stood stone still, my mind not quite catching up to what was going on around me. Maybe that's why the screams I heard didn't match the mouths making the sounds. Maybe that's why I couldn't hear Fred and George yelling at me to move. I felt someone tackle me and a green flash hit the wall, crumbling it but otherwise doing no other damage.

_The final war_, My mind observed. This was the _end_. Whatever outcome this had would be final—there was no going back. Sides were chosen, battles were fought, and this was the end. I was overwhelmed, especially since I'd just recently been pushed into battle and forced to either kill those I loved or kill those who were more powerful than I'd ever be.

I hadn't even thought about it before choosing the latter.

One look at Fred told me that I'd scared the hell out of him. I didn't apologize because there just wasn't time for it. There had been no time for final goodbyes, hugs, or declarations of love. It was just dying without mercy, killing with even less. I had seen people I loved and hated alike fall under killing spells. It hurt me even worse to see people I could've known but didn't die. I could've met those kids, talked to them, given them one more friend or acquaintance before they died.

Tears fell from my eyes as I righted myself from the ground and joined the fight. I hated the feeling of taking another person's life, but it was necessary. I closed my eyes and did my best to ignore the horrible sounds of carnage.

Closing my eyes had probably been the worst decision of my life. Worse than my decision to ignore my studies in favor of the twins' antics. Worse than my decision to leave England. Worse than my decision to _come back_.

There was a shout, a scream, and a horrible feeling of pain before I felt the ground at my back and something crushing my body.

And you know what? For the first time in my life, I felt at peace. I couldn't hear yelling or crying or laughing. I didn't hear disappointment or pride. There was no noise around me to disturb my rest. I _could_ rest. I had no curse or blessing or inheritance to make me different because where I was at that moment, there was no one around to be compared with. I was perfect.

I slept.

*break*

All time seemed to stop for Fred when he saw a spell hit the wall behind Balisk. He screamed, hoping against hope that Balisk would hear him before the wall crumbled and crushed him. But Balisk's didn't even open his eyes until a split second before he was overcome by the rubble.

"Balisk!" Fred ran to the spot where Balisk had once stood and began digging past the chunks of debris and pulled at the arm he freed. When he'd revealed Balisk's pale and still body, he brought him to his chest and cried.

"Fred, Fred!" Anthony called, running towards him. "Oh my God…"

Anthony looked horrified when he saw Balisk's body in Fred's arms. Fred had yet to notice his presence and continued to cry to himself and rock back and forth with the blonde boy resting against his lap.

Anthony turned at the beat of sudden silence and hears the ending of what seems to be Voldemort allotting them time to treat the wounded and taking care of the dead. He ignored the final words and kneeled beside Fred.

"Fred, ve have to take him downstairs," Anthony said quietly, taking one of the deceased boy's arms gently.

"No!" Fred jerked back. "You can't take him!"

"Fred, I just—"

"I promised him! I swore I'd never let anyone hurt him, now…Now…" Fred sobbed into Balisk's hair and held onto him like his life depended on it.

"Fred!" Anthony slapped Fred across the face and took hold of his shoulders. "He's dead, all right? Balisk is dead and there is nothing you can do about that now. For the love of God, at least get his body somevhere safe, all right?"

Fred froze in shock for several seconds before nodding and reluctantly giving up his beloved's body to Anthony.

*break*

"Why are we here?" Fred asked, looking around the classroom as Anthony conjured a bed from thin air and laid Balisk on it. "There's nothing we can do about him now…He's dead."

Anthony regretted saying what he had because Fred was now speaking in the most depressed tone he ever heard, "There's nothing _you _can do, but I can do something."

"What do you mean?"

"Do you read, Fred?"

Fred shrugged, admitting that he'd never really read much other than books on charms and curses.

"Vell, if you'd read a special book in the forbidden section of any magical library called _Magical Birth Defects_, you'd know of a condition called Eterna Factalus."

"That's Latin, I'm assuming?"

"It's Latin for Eternal Power. People with this condition show signs of it before they're even born," Anthony's eyes softened as he got progressively more saddened in the explanation. "Many parents give up their children vhen they discover they have it because the children are so explosive with their magical abilities. People that have Eterna Factalus usually have a good adaptation for memorizing spells, vhich makes them good students, but their powers are so sensitive that even feeling the slightest bit of emotion sets of magical outbursts that…Vell they aren't pretty."

Fred began to notice that the more saddened Anthony's voice got, the colder the room got. Everything looked altogether more miserable in a way that Fred couldn't place.

"You…You're an Eterna Factalus."

Anthony smiled sadly, "You've got me. Unregistered, too."

"They have to register with the ministry?" Fred asked.

Anthony nodded, "At least in Bulgaria. Eterna Factalus vere more common in the past there than anyvhere else—that is to say, there were more caretakers like my mother, Simone, that took them in vhen they came from other countries."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Vell…It's a long shot, and don't expect anything, but I might be able to bring him back.

Fred stopped and looked at him, "That's impossible. Even for…whatever you said you were. You _can't_ bring someone back from the dead."

"That, my dear, is vhere you're wrong."

Fred gripped his head as if it pained him, "Let me get this straight, you think that you can bring him back from the dead?"

"I don't _think_, I know."

"Then why didn't you bring your family back when _they_ died?"

Anthony's eye flinched and Fred regretted saying anything. He was about to apologize when Anthony spoke again.

"Because the first rule of using this kind of magic is equal exchange—"

"Like alchemy?" Fred asked, recalling a book Balisk once described to him about that topic.

"Exactly. I had to have three other lives to exchange for my family's—lives vhich I took myself."

"You killed—"

"I killed the three people who killed my family. Vith my bare hands. No magic, not even a veapon. Just," Anthony made a motion as if he were snapping someone's neck.

"Did you…?"

"No. It was too late," Anthony rubbed his arm. "Their bodies had been dead for months by the time I'd killed all three. They'd decomposed too much. I can put the life back into someone, but I cannot restore their bodies before I do that."

"Okay…But I still don't see how that help Balisk. We haven't got anyone to exchange him for."

"That's another place vhere you're wrong," Anthony said again. He walked over to a closet in the back of the classroom and called quietly. "Come on out."

The closet jarred and Fred's breath caught when he saw who had been hiding inside.

Ashton Acton's skin had taken on a grey-ish quality from hiding out of the sun's reach for months on end. His eyes had sunken in and he had lost too much weight to retain the attractiveness he once had. He looked starved and feral, but smiled a chipped grin when he saw Fred.

"Ashton…" Fred whispered.

"He's volunteered to take his brother's place in death," Anthony explained.

"You can't do that!" Fred objected. "He obviously insane, he can't volunteer or consent or anything! You can't do this to him!"

"Fred, living like Ashton has is no vay to live. Never being able to go out in the open in fear that you'll be killed on the spot. He's lived vith Death Eaters that tortured him for sport to see who could get him to scream in pain first! Do you really think he vants to live?"

"After Balisk was rescued," Ashton spoke up, his voice cracking horribly with the strain of disuse. "The Death Eater guarding me disapparated and took me with him. I was a slave for six weeks before I managed to slit his throat and escape. I've been jumping from abandoned house to abandoned house ever since. I was going to kill myself anyway, but I wouldn't want to waste my life if it could be used to save my baby brother."

Ashton walked over to Balisk's body and kissed his forehead lovingly, "I love you, Balisk. Remember that."

"Ashton, come here," Anthony said, beckoning the blonde boy towards him. "Fred I need you to look away…I don't like people vatching me."

"Right," Fred turned around obediently.

Anthony sighed and brushed his hand across Ashton's cheek, "Are you ready?"

Ashton nodded confidently and looked into the taller man's eyes with a clarity that Anthony hadn't seen him have even before he'd gone insane. Anthony nodded too, trying to have the bravery that Ashton did.

Anthony took a deep breath and raised his wand.

Ashton screamed as pain ripped through him like nothing he's ever felt before. He felt the oddest sensation of something being ripped from him before he felt nothing at all.

*break*

Have you ever been woken rudely from the best sleep you've ever had? That is similar to the feeling of being brought back from the dead. You feel such peace and tranquility when suddenly you're thrown back into this dank, cold world.

I was thrown into a war. For the second time. In the same day.

It helped a lot that the first thing I saw was Fred, but I still knew that people were dying _right now_. I had been one of them, but now I wasn't.

"What happened?" I asked, my voice weak. Fred wrapped his arms around my waist and held me.

"Oh God, Balisk…I thought I lost you. I thought—" He broke off with a sob.

I looked around and saw Anthony standing there looking at the ground. I followed his gaze and saw my brother—who I had thought to be dead long ago—indefinitely deceased.

"I'm sorry—"

"It's fine. I know what he must be feeling right now…He'd enjoy it. It's wonderful."

Fred looked up at me sadly.

I brushed his cheek with my palm, "It doesn't compare to being here with you, of course."

When he kissed me, it was like he was trying to take back all our lost time with it. I tried the same, but the feeling of a reversing clock never came like it should have. I didn't even have the assurance that we'd have more time in the future, because we could be killed at any moment. But a wise man once told me that I should live for the moment instead of regretting the past and worrying over the future.

The man was a book, but that is a lesser detail.

_***OWARI***_

**I felt that the closing thing needed to be underlined, bolded **_**and**_** italicized to show the gravity of that being the end. Say what you will, I wanted it to end that way. Maybe they died, maybe they didn't. Deal with it :D**


End file.
